He then became a research fellow at the Ironbridge Institute, and later lectured on industrial archaeology at Nene College of Higher Education in Northampton.
[3] Trinder's early career was in teaching, after which he earned his PhD from the University of Leicester in 1980 for a thesis titled "The social and economic history of Banbury between 1830 and 1880.
Larry McNally of National Archives of Canada felt the book of 964 pages generally succeeded in covering the area but there were deficiencies such as the rather short articles on industrial processes and materials of "Foundry" and "Iron".
[9] There were also geographic omissions with no articles at all covering Central or South America, the Pacific Rim, Asia or Africa, although Australia and New Zealand were represented.
The overall result was patchy and of uneven quality with too many avoidable errors and too many articles written by Trinder despite the claimed numerous international contributors.